ACCOUNTABLE

There was an accumulation of little known facts outside my door. They wait in a hustle closely packed and limited in space. So much so that their movement is curtailed for fear of bruising.


They hum and mill around there on the spot. Shifting only from one toe to the next, drumming now in anticipation as we would our fingers. It sounds to me like hail-stones though the day is sunny.

Finally I open the door. The crack grows and as it does so they pour in. I am overwhelmed by these strangers with their strangeness. Their close edginess. Their elbows and knees.


So quickly herding them rather like cattle with a long prodding stick I guide and sometimes even push them, single-file, one by one into the conversion room. God knows what goes on in there but it seems to work. For after a period of time they are accountable, sociable and even smiling broadly. Their good behaviour takes the show and elbows and knees are forgotten to us now.

Simply they introduce themselves as friend and this is how I come to meet the many aspects of the friend now facing me.


Under their breath they whisper of the child in the cowboy hat and pressed coat who has seen them inside the conversion room. His eyes so they say are unchanging like a boat on the sea.